4. Januarie: sympathy or disgust? Flashcards
Model intro :
’ The Merchant’s Tale’ is an extraordinarily complex poem, half fabliau, half sermon, whose discordant elements have defied satisfactory resolution, and divided critics to such an extent that their opinions of its tone extend from a ‘spirit of satirical fun’ to one of ‘mordant venom’….
- Quotes - merchant’s poor marriage judgement
‘a shrewe at al’
‘snare’
‘wepyng and walying, care and oother sorwe’
- Quotes: Januaries mercantile lens
the ‘old and hoor’ ‘knyght’ aims ‘t’espien’
… connotes an uncomfortable sense of voyeurism
metaphor - ‘whoso tooke a mirour, polisshed bryght/ And sette it in a commune market-place’
‘Smal degre’
- CONTEXT
Lombardy, Northern Italy, a place known for tyrnany where Chaucer knew personally It was an extremely oppressive social and political setting, notorious for its violent coat of arms which featured a serpent swallowing a child.
- CRITIC
Dinshaw “Januarie regards May as a possession to be bought and controlled, rather than a partner to be loved and respected.”
- quotes: women as food
women to be like slabs of meat, intended soley to satisfy his carnal ‘appetit’.
marriage is ‘hony-swete’
breasts ‘‘fairer […] than is wyn’
conveys his desire for a youthful wife (despite being ‘sixty yeer’ himself) in food-related terms, confidently stating: ‘bet than old boef is the tendre veel.’
The adjectives ‘fresshe’ and ‘tendre’ almost always seem to be an epithet of his wife, May.
- fetishising her vulnerability
He predatorily calls her a ‘tendre creature’
she will have to ‘endure’ Januarie’s ‘courage’ later that night.
(A far cry from the noble ‘corage’ and ‘pitee’ that is referenced in the knights Tale)
Januarie’s secret delight that May might even ‘it not sustene’ is a nauseating hyperbole
- quotes: unwarranted hubris (brethren)
‘tendre youth and stoupyng age’,
The ‘worthy kyght’ (and epithet which becomes increasingly hollow)
‘freendes deere’,
‘noon old wyf’ – so certain, in fact, that he repeats the formulation twice, almost verbatim, and in other forms several times more.
(Chaucer this makes clear with the anaphoric repetition of ‘I wol’)
The certainty of his tone is alos comically exaggerated by Chaucer’s liberal use of intensifiers (‘in no manere’, ‘certayn’, certeynly’)
- attitude towards old women
women over thirty to ‘bene-straw and greet forage’,
old women ‘konne so muchel craft ‘ - Januarie does not cite a single authority to support this point of view, and this, together with his hyperbolic tone, leads the reader to feel he is deeply conceited.
Indeed, his belief that young women are not capable of this ‘muchel craft’ is laced with proleptic irony due to his later cuckoldry by may.
- sinister arrogance in build up to consummation
deliberately feeble auto-rhyme of ‘may’ (the month) with ‘may’(the verb), used by Chaucer to parody and debase the trope of courtly love.
latinate diction describing may as being ‘fulfild of alle beautee and pleasaunce’
plummets bathetically to Januarie’s fantasy that
‘he myght in arms wolde hir streyene’ in jarringly harsh Anglo-Saxon phonetics in these lines are perhaps especially remarkable due to the poetic clusters of vernacular words chosen to suggest …
- CONTEXT
‘harder than ever Parys did Eleyne’
The Greek myth of abduction of Helen by Paris which led to a ten year war is often used as a representation of the destructive power of desire.
- CRITIC
the mingling of the sordid lexis from a semantic field of sexual violnce with figures of the ecclesiastical past punctures the romance which deflates into fabliau .
As critic Helen Cooper suggests: ‘it is his own power of self-delusion that makes him regard himself as sexually equal to heroic lovers’
- Hubris of his own sexual potency
Januarie seems so insistent on reiterating his sexual potency, and the power of his ‘stark and suffisaunt’ ‘lymes’, yet it only serves to the effect of making him seem rather self-concious.
Furthermore, after falling blind his insecurity accelerates, his jealousy is ‘so outrageous’ that he demands that he ‘had hond on hire alway’.
- perhaps slight sympathy for J? CRITIC
as critic Burnley suggests : ‘by the end Januarie is a willing accomplice in his own deception’.
- J’s pleasure garden scene opening
Far from impregnable, Januaries pleasure garden ‘walled al with stoon’ becomes the setting for his own cuckolding.
However, he believes there is ‘nys but thou and I’,
- CONTEXR
He delivers a parody of the Song of Songs,
(Com forth, my white spouse!’)
a poem which inspired the notion of courtly love in poetry, which emerged in medieval Europe and idealized the intense and often illicit love between a knight and a noblewoman. Some poets and troubadours drew upon the imagery and themes of the Song of Songs to articulate the passions and desires of Romance. - biblical auctoritee
- she is sly!
as her husband speaks with his heart on his sleeve, she is sly as ‘a signe made she’ to Damyan, betraying Januarie and taking advantage of his disability,
the dramatic irony of this scene containing May and the ‘naddre’ in the garden elicits pity for the foolish old man
- Context.2
helpless old man unwares of Damyan who is fulfiling the falbliotic trope of hiding himself waiting for sex in a pear tree, which seemed to serve as a motif of eroticism in medieval folklored due to the luscious and inviting shape of a pear.
- may’s manipulative panache
distressed - ‘she bigan to wepe’ crocodile tears, she is depicted as answering him ‘benyngnely’ a word associated with idealised women in romance, therefore highlighting her churlishness in contrast.
However, May argues that she is ‘a gentil womman and no wenche’ and uses respectful and devout religious terms such as ‘soule’ and ‘preest,
, by disguising base motivations using elevated language she is practically mimicking januarie yet her blantant irony almost makes her seem more poisonous.
There is a forceful energy in her lying,- never explicit - ‘if evere I do’ giving a rhetorical power to her words.
Frtheremore, the dichotomy between the idealised version of May and the deviosu version is emphasised in the auto-ryhming couplet
‘and every signe that she koude make/ wel bet than Januarie, hir owene make’ .
May hints at her ambiguous pregnacy by complaining of cravings for ‘smale peres grene’ and
perhaps lamentably Januarie proves partly responsible for the rupture of his own marriage and patrilineal line when he encircles…
With his sight magically restored by Pluto, January witnesses his own cuckolding:
‘He swyved thee; I saugh it with myne yen’
Yet, instead of wreaking revenge on the perpetrators, he seems to turn a blind eye, his certainty deteriorating into only ‘me thought’ readily accepting May’s sophistic excuse
model conc:
Despite the convincing argument to suggest that …. Chaucer’s masterful irony should not be overlooked…
In typical Chaucerian style, the tale mocks all characters present, yet more interestingly, the most embittered jibes seem to be aimed at …
Chaucer is constantly interested in multiple ways of reading and thinking and therefore to suggest … would be a mistake.
